I think the new rule would be much more palatable if it was 100X the TERRAFORMED resources of the star rather than the NATURAL resources.
The former is much more scalable as “inflation” naturally increases the number of ships … with a corresponding increase in Terra. Plus I’ve actually played a couple of games where it was setup starting with TF10 - adds an interesting dimension to the game … but you could hit that production limit pretty soon.
BTW, even if you put a message up on the “star screen”, players may not notice that production has stalled since the ship counts are kinda high.
@cptcrackers makes some good points in that this may balance the scales even more in favor of the player with more stars - if anything, you want to give the weaker players some way to fight back.
I can’t say I’ve been in many games stalemated as Jay describes. If you’ve got multiple belligerents with that kind of fleet size I say more power to them. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the games time limited, except by custom setting.
However, perhaps some sort of decay rate for fleets might be interesting. For small fleets the decay would round to zero, but the larger the fleet the larger the percent decay per tick. Use it or lose it.
I want the rule to encourage you to pick and an enemy and attack…
My intention is to end long slow drawn out cold wars. I want games to come to conclusion a little faster.
A more heavy handed tactic I could employ would be to say that no game last longer than 6 weeks (in ticks) and that the player with the most stars at the end is the win
Jay, you’ve created an awesome game. Let me start with that. This change, and the reasons you’re giving for it don’t Improve the game for everyone. What they do is attempt to impose a seemingly personal preference about strategies and play styles that people should use.
In my view, games that reach these kinds of ship counts have stagnated and need to be drawn to an end.
I couldn’t disagree more. and I don’t think I’m alone… this is when the REAL wheeling and dealing and backroom moves take place.
I think the 6 week timer is a better idea than ship counts. HOWEVER, I don’t think it should be imposed on custom games except as an option.
I also think that Hulk is right if you HAVE to have limits, then them to terraformed resources.
My initial reaction to the rule change is to recoil and “not like it”…but I think I’ll give it a little while to form a complete opinion. Even if I were to endorse it (as if you guys cared ;)) – I’m not sure 100x natural resources is large enough…but we’ll see.
Whatever is decided, perhaps one way to encourage this as the play style would be to make it an option, but have it turned on by default. That feels more like “encouraging” and will naturally lead games in the direction Jay wants them to go.
I really enjoy toying around with the rule settings and I’ve created games (including the TF 10 games Hulk mentions) that I think have been rather fun and very different, but that would totally break this rule. For instance, I made an experimental TBG with 24 hr jumps, 16 hr productions, small 16 star home clusters and lots of money , science and manufacturing. The catch was the map was custom and the clusters were far apart (2-3 days). We did start with hyper 10 or so, but needed hyper 15-20 to reach each other (we had lots of science and experimentation tho so didn’t take long). It made mega fleets where we had 120k ships across our little 16 star clusters…certainly not the way the game is intended to be played “out of the box”, but I thought it was a cool and refreshing twist and I really enjoyed being able to so drastically change the game style and mechanics.
For the record though, I abhor the idea of a 6 week limit.
I was initially toying around with using decay rates using Euler’s number and the golden ratio, but I think the formula that I presented above is easier for players to learn.
Attrition warfare is a valid form of warfare, which buys time, if you need more time to negotiate for an new ally to join your effort. NP2 Triton can be an arena for new players to learn about this strategy of war.
More time might offer an opportunity for your enemy to make a mistake, or when a new ally joins you, can change your defense into an advantageous offense towards victory.
HOWEVER, World War 1 has demonstrated that trench warfare is not the best way to fight a war.
Philosopher Sun Tzu, German field marshal Erwin Rommel, general George S. Patton, general Norman Schwarzkopf will all agree that attrition warfare should be avoided.
Economy of force is a more efficient way to fight a war, using less force or resources to accomplish more effect towards winning the war. NP2 Triton is also an arena to learn about this strategy. Can you figure out how to outsmart your enemy ?
Building a million ships is usually not an example of using economy of force.
I guess I was wondering if there might be some advantage to associating the decay to carriers rather than to stars, both from the persepctive of gameplay and programming. But I don’t have a strong opinion.
Do you think that as long as you are sticking with this new rule, that you could please add some quick code to mark the stars that are currently not producing? Make their names or ship counts red or yellow or something? Or maybe make their resources circle a different color.
It’s REALLY tedious right now to go around with a calculator figuring out who can still produce ships and who can’t.
@JayKyburz It seems like all you need to do to circumvent this rule is to designate one of your lower-resource stars as a ‘stockpile’ star and have all of your carriers drop off their ships at the stockpile.
I ran though a quick simulation of this here: Neptune's Pride
In that game currently have amassed 50,000 ships on my homeworld.
Is this tactic within the intention of the new rule?
I considered that, but it does mean there are stars in your empire undefended. Same as if you just had 50K carrier looping around picking them up.
I guess my question is why do you want to stockpile the ships?
I fully accept that this rule is not ideal, but I do want something in there to encourage the use of ships to conquer stars. I want to encourage players to act after the game has been running a long time already.
How about an upkeep mechanic where you have to pay $X from your production income for every ship?
I half seriously above suggested attaching a decay rate to a carrier. But totally seriously, a decay rate plus reintroduction of carrier experience might be very cool.
I don’t know why anyone would want 50k on a star before or after the rule change. It seems like if you are bound and determined to stockpile that many ships, it’s still possible.
That might could work. Personally I’d prefer no change at all since some people do prefer long cold wars, but as an option, sure. If you do introduce some rule encouraging offensive play, my vote goes to scaling production back gradually. Also, to allow this rule to scale and not become too limiting, I would either:
Base it off of terraformed resources
Base it as a percentage of the player’s total stars
or
Introduce “star capacity” or similar as a new technology. Call it traffic control or whatever you want, but the idea is that as the game progresses, players can upgrade this technology to be able to hold more ships on a star without crowding out production.
I guess I’m looking for an in-game, narrative explanation for the rule.
If the narrative is that a star cannot supply a fleet beyond 100x its resources (not enough food for the crews, not enough energy to keep the orbital jets operational), then a 50,000 ship fleet shouldn’t be allowed to exist regardless of whether it came into being as a result of the manufacturing capabilities of one star or from being amalgamated from the manufacturing capabilities of 100 stars.
I’m seeing this crop up on stars in my current games where I’m not deliberately trying to stock pile (I’m actually attacking 2 players atm!) I have central drop off zones for looping fleets and now I feel like I’m being penalized for my strategy. This needs modifying imo… probably either the decaying methods mentioned above, or just a higher limit.
As I said earlier (and several others agreed), I think the new rule would be much more palatable if it was 100X the TERRAFORMED resources of the star rather than the NATURAL resources. The former is much more scalable as “inflation” naturally increases the number of ships … with a corresponding increase in Terra.
I’m guessing an easy coding change @JayKyburz - highly recommended.
I too am having this happen unintentionally in my large game. I have 150 stars and Im pretty darn good at logistics…but I still have stars no longer producing simply because the loops or supply lines havent picked them up yet.
Im also a hyper aggressive player and at war with a 2+ players. I really am trying to attack and get ships to the front line.
If I were to have to live with this i’d have to buy a lot more carriers, WG’s, and only make logistical hubs of ships in my supply line only at the highest resourced stars. The logistics in endgame with so many stars can be incredibly complex already and having to work around this makes it that much worse. I can respect Jay’s desire to bring about this sort of change, but if we end up going with a limit like this, the limit is too low imho.
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